German farmers' cooperative managing the Schwäbisch Hall pig breed and contributing practitioner expertise to European sustainable food research.
BESH (Bäuerliche Erzeugergemeinschaft Schwäbisch Hall) is a German farmers' cooperative from the Baden-Württemberg region, best known for managing the Schwäbisch-Hällisches Landschwein — a traditional regional pig breed that forms the basis of a protected quality food label. In H2020, they participated not as researchers but as practitioner partners, contributing direct farming knowledge, farmer networks, and real production system experience to large international research consortia. Their role is to anchor scientific research in the reality of what farmers actually do: managing livestock breeds, sourcing feed, and producing for regional quality markets. This makes them a rare asset in EU research — an organization that represents the farmer's perspective rather than studying it.
TREASURE (2015–2019) investigated the diversity of local pig breeds and traditional production systems for sustainable high-quality products, directly aligned with BESH's core business in Schwäbisch Hall pork.
Legumes Translated (2018–2022) covered soybean, faba bean, and pea in integrated arable and livestock farming, with BESH contributing as a farmer-side partner in feed and food value chains.
Legumes Translated used a multi-actor approach explicitly involving the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS), where cooperatives like BESH serve as bridges between research and farmers on the ground.
Both projects — TREASURE on high-quality traditional pig products and Legumes Translated on feed and protein systems — connect to BESH's core mandate of managing a traceable, quality-assured regional food supply chain.
BESH entered H2020 through TREASURE (2015), focused squarely on their core identity: the conservation and valorization of local pig breeds and traditional pork production. No keywords were tagged to this project in the dataset, reflecting its deep alignment with practice rather than scientific method. By 2018, their involvement shifted toward Legumes Translated, which introduced an entirely new thematic layer — protein crops, arable systems, and structured knowledge transfer via AKIS — while still including livestock terms (pig, dairy, poultry). The trend is clear: they moved from defending a heritage product to engaging with the broader protein transition agenda in European food systems.
BESH is moving from heritage livestock preservation toward the broader European protein self-sufficiency agenda, making them a credible practitioner partner for future projects on sustainable feed, crop-livestock integration, or regional food value chains.
BESH has participated in every H2020 project as a partner, never as coordinator — a profile consistent with a farmers' cooperative that brings ground-level legitimacy rather than research management capacity. Despite only two projects, they have worked alongside 52 unique partners across 16 countries, suggesting they've been embedded in large, well-networked pan-European consortia. Working with them means gaining access to a practicing farmer organization with real supply chain relationships, but expect them to contribute expertise and networks rather than to lead work packages or manage deliverables.
BESH has built a surprisingly broad network for such a small organization — 52 consortium partners across 16 countries from just two projects, indicating participation in large multi-country consortia with diverse European and international representation. Their network spans research institutes, farming organizations, and industry actors across the EU agricultural research landscape.
BESH is not a research institute, consultancy, or technology company — they are actual farmers, running an actual cooperative with actual animals, land, and markets. This is extremely rare in H2020 consortia, where most "practitioner" partners are associations or consultancies one step removed from production. If you need a project partner who can test interventions in real farm conditions, validate knowledge transfer with real farmer networks, or provide authentic practitioner buy-in for an agricultural innovation project, BESH offers something that cannot be replicated by a university department or rural NGO.
